What I really didn't see coming, and do not fully understand, is the focus on the fact that Sony didn't let us look at the plastic casing that will hold the upcoming system.

Reaction to the lack of an actual PS4 box at last week's unveiling was fast and skeptical. "We haven't seen the box. Or triangle, or orb, or whatever this non-existent hardware for the PlayStation 4 might look like," Gizmodo noted right after the event was over. "Sony stoked our excitement, and there's no way to be satisfied. What a bummer."

After the show, Sony president and CEO Jack Tretton admitted to AllThingsD that the casing was missing from the event because it wasn't yet finalized. "We don’t have a mass-production box that we can bring out and pull out," he said. "That’s still in development in terms of final specs and design."

But Sony representatives also pushed back against the idea that the actual casing the system will be in was all that important at this stage of the game. "The console is just a box," Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida told Polygon. "The controller was very important to show because it has the share button, but the console is just a console."

Sony UK boss Fergal Gara said that while he understands the frustration over the issue, "frankly, a box is a box. Is that really the most important thing?"

Sony Europe's Jim Ryan added to the chorus, suggesting that "in our mind it's like 10, 20, 50 times more important to demonstrate what that PS4 can actually do as opposed to what it looks like."

It’s just a box

I have to take Sony's side. Compared to the things the company actually announced during the conference—decently detailed hardware specs, live gameplay and engine demos, game and partnership announcements—what the console actually looks like seems relatively unimportant. It would have been one thing if the casing's no-show came after a press conference that was nothing but a string of buzzwordy promises with no actual content or announcements to back them up, but that's not what happened.

The actual PS4 casing, whatever it looks like, isn't really going to be that important to the way you actually experience the console. Like every console that's come before it, the PlayStation 4 is going to be a box that sits in your entertainment center. You'll interact with it directly for maybe five seconds while you put in a disc and turn the system on (even less if you download games and use the power button on the controller). After that, you'll be ignoring the casing for hours as you stare at the images on the TV screen—you know, the kind of images that Sony actually made the focus of its announcement last week.

Sure, those images were running on development hardware and not a finalized product, which might lead some to think the actual system won't be up to that kind of performance. But those development kits are tuned to emulate what the shipping hardware is going to be capable of running, so developers know what kind of performance level to target. And Sony has already confirmed what kind of input and output ports will be on the final system, so we don't need to see the final housing to get that information either.

I'll admit that a console's form factor does matter a little, as Sony itself has proven by slimming down the PS3's shell twotimes since the release of the quite-massive launch unit. The tiny Wii was much easier to cart around than its direct competitors, and who can forget the part the GameCube's cute little handle played at the system's unveiling.

To my mind, though, all this focus on Sony's missing box seems to be serving as a proxy for the more legitimate concerns about the other things Sony still hasn't discussed regarding the PlayStation 4. It was hard not to notice that we didn't get a price point or precise release date for the console, which are pretty important bits of information. No one outside of the presenters (and Jimmy Fallon) has actually gotten to touch the controller, which could be seen as worrisome. We've heard extremely few details about the new PlayStation Eye camera or the system's Gaikai-powered streaming features or other details that people want to know about.

Of course, all of this information will be revealed at and after June's E3 show, and this kind of long, slow rollout of new hardware is commonplace in the game industry. But on this score, I think the market has been reconditioned in recent years by Apple's announcement strategy, which keeps new products closely guarded secrets until a full reveal mere days (or minutes) before they're available on store shelves. The last time someone tried that in the game industry was in 1995 when Sega made its surprise Saturn launch announcement, a move that helped the system get trounced in the marketplace by... Sony's original PlayStation.

I understand the need some people have to see a physical product in order to think it's real. But what Sony showed on stage last week proved that the PS4 is a real product, and an impressive bit of hardware to boot. Eventually we'll get to see the magical black box that converts electricity and wireless controller inputs into the stuff we saw on that stage. Until then, just trust that there's a system behind the curtain making it all work.

Does anyone remember when Sony showed "the PS3" with dual HDMI, three Ethernet ports, and the boomerang controller and the real shipping PS3 ended up being larger with lower specs? I imagine the PS4 thermals are not finalized (as other commenters said) and Sony does not want to show a non-final case that is too small or too large.

I think this is just a small hiccup being magnified by the Internet-Complainer Complex. They're probably closer to finalizing the design than most think, but just decided to hold off showing it because it's not 100% nailed down. They got some negative reaction with the intial PS3 reveal vs the box that actually shipped. They're simply making sure they don't make the same mistake. A little bit of bitching about an absent box today will go away forever once the box is revealed. But any kind of bait and switch with a reduction of ports or features between and now and release will never be forgotten (we're still talking about the PS3 bait and switch, right?).

The only way this is a true negative from a marketing standpoint is if the final box is just garish. But come on, this is Sony. They may not be Apple but they know how to design consumer electiontronics. This is much ado about nothing. But it's fun to comment!

279 posts | registered Jun 8, 2008

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

"What Sony did reveal matters a lot more than what the box looks like."

THANK YOU! I cannot, for the life of me, understand all the whining people are doing around that subject. Who cares what it looks like? Sony has consistently made pretty good looking hardware, and the PS3 was hands down the most ergonomic console of its generation (no power brick, quiet operation, clean aesthetic).

They're likely still putting the finishing touches on the design. And that's OK.

<sarcasm>I've seen the box, it is beige and looks like a PC and shares many of the same components as a PC.</sarcasm>

Seriously though, game consoles are more than just a invisible box that get hidden away, for many years they have been designed to be shown off and people have rediculed ugly and horrible designs. Take for instance the design changes from the original xbox to the white 360, to the 360 slim, the design matters. True it may not have a huge impact on what you do with it, but it does give me an indication if I have to hide the thing or not.

The sad reality is that the "gaming community" has a lot of really young kids in it. And we all know kids are stupid, despite what preening parents might tell you. I know I was certainly stupid as a kid. They focus on superficial crap like this.

Being young they don't realize the case can literally look like anything, and could be drastically changed right up until the last minute. And likely it will be focus grouped to death up until that point.

More importantly, as we've seen during the life of the 360 and PS3; the case will change throughout the console's lifetime.

In reality the only thing that matters about a new console is the games. Literally nothing else matters at all. If it has great exclusive games it will be a success, if it doesn't it will fail. It's as simple as that.

The orginal ps3 was a thing to behold. Glossy black with chrome accents, touch controls and a front facing slot load drive. It was gorgeous. The current ps3 is a flimsy piece of crap that does not instill the requisite feeling of "this is some serious shit."

The PS4, which will most likely suffer the consequences of the PS3's original blatent disregard for cost effectiveness what with all of its high end parts, had better not look like a flimsy peice of shit on opening day.

Its not enough to have a high end circuit board capable of rendering the galaxy. I want it to feel like a high end galaxy rendering son of a bitch when i hold it for the first time and arrange it next to my surround sound receiver.

Sony has a pretty long history of bullshit specs and presentations, so I don't think asking to see some running hardware is unreasonable. Frankly, without the box, the date, or the price I don't really see why they bothered at all. At this point they should have final prototypes of the shells and the hardware, even if it's not all put together yet.

When a new car model is created, manufacturers don't develop an engine and chassis then do an announcement talking about the specs and how revolutionary the wheel and dashboard are. They build the body FIRST, then do a reveal at an auto show. Sometimes what you see is just the body on a chassis with some wheels that has to be pushed out on stage--it's not a car in any real sense of the word, but it's the thing people lust over.

The difference is, the body of a car is extremely important to things like aerodynamics, storage space, safety, and countless other areas that have to do with actually using the car. The body of a console is almost completely incidental to the experience of actually PLAYING video games.

I am going to buy a PS4. But why do tech companies do these paper launches? And why cant they do a proper keynote? Just look at Apple/Steve.

By announcing it today they have killed ps3 more or less.

BTW. Consoles are not what they used to be. Now its just a sneaked down X86 machine instead of powerful PPC machines. I would have loved to see an IBM Power7 CPU inside next gen console (Not the server version, but a home version like the G5 that powered Xbox360. Back in 2005 G5 was by far the fastest PC CPU available. )

When a new car model is created, manufacturers don't develop an engine and chassis then do an announcement talking about the specs and how revolutionary the wheel and dashboard are. They build the body FIRST, then do a reveal at an auto show. Sometimes what you see is just the body on a chassis with some wheels that has to be pushed out on stage--it's not a car in any real sense of the word, but it's the thing people lust over.

The difference is, the body of a car is extremely important to things like aerodynamics, storage space, safety, and countless other areas that have to do with actually using the car. The body of a console is almost completely incidental to the experience of actually PLAYING video games.

I read all the time about car companies touting the revolutionary tech in their engines, and other systems like transmissions and drive train, too.

The body on a car is crazy important, as Kyle points out. But it's not even remotely uncommon for the car industry to talk up the tech inside the car, before re-purposing the same engines across various body types.

Seriously, I've been wondering the same thing. With all the content and information that was in this announcement the least important thing is what the box looks like.

They even brought this up on TWiT this week and it hurts my brain as to why anyone cares. This was a developer announcement for a platform, not a product release announcement. The full platform was revealed. That is what is important, not the first iteration of what the box might look like; because this will change over time.

Sony takes a lot of crap and I am far from a fan, but this is the dumbest criticism I've heard of any company in a while.

Apple thinks through every aspect of their launches, including the things that Sony would have you believe don't matter like appearance, price, and availability date. If Sony had only gotten one of those things wrong you wouldn't be seeing so much criticism.

Also, for most machines (computers, cars, phones) designing the hardware is an integral part of the process. Not having any hardware to show suggests that the project is still far from launch. Now maybe consoles are a particular situation where form truly has no effect on function and you can just slap it together a couple weeks before launch, but there is naturally going to be some skepticism about this.

Yeah yeah, logically you can make that argument. I mean, I'm going to buy it whatever it looks like. But, I still want to see the sleek new design. When they don't show the box it makes me think there is a team of elves somewhere in a lab furiously sketching out the final design. I mean, you could argue it doesn't matter what the new iPad looks like, etc. but the reality is that it does factor in.

Apple thinks through every aspect of their launches, including the things that Sony would have you believe don't matter like appearance, price, and availability date. If Sony had only gotten one of those things wrong you wouldn't be seeing so much criticism.

Also, for most machines (computers, cars, phones) designing the hardware is an integral part of the process. Not having any hardware to show suggests that the project is still far from launch. Now maybe consoles are a particular situation where form truly has no effect on function and you can just slap it together a couple weeks before launch, but there is naturally going to be some skepticism about this.

The case is only one small part of the hardware, though... and, as somebody else already said, it's the least incidental. The important pieces of hardware, such as the CPU, GPU and memory specs, were all revealed during the announcement.

I think part of the reasoning/complaining is simply that without seeing the actual hardware doing the things they claim, it's difficult to be sure that it isn't going to be yet another case of vaporware + bait and switch. The number of things they specifically didn't say in the event makes one rather skeptical that they can actually do what they're claiming by end of year.

I can understand some interest in how it looks. The aesthetic in the physical box will probably reflect the look and feel of the software UI. The smooth, shiny white plastic of the Wii matched the system interface, for example. Good design would have some relationship between the box you buy and what it looks like on the shelves in the stores, in press material, and in your living room and the experience of using it.

In the absence of any information about the software, navigating the services, and such, the appearance of the physical box would be the only clue. Once we know more and the system is on sale, it becomes less important, because there are other things to create the system's identity. Right now, there's no clear image of what a person can use when thinking "Playstation 4."

A lot of people use the PS3 as an entertainment hub as well as a gaming system. If the outside package is fugly, there's no way in hell that the PS4 is going to make into most entertainment setups. You need both Form and Function for a HT setup.

I mean, you could argue it doesn't matter what the new iPad looks like, etc. but the reality is that it does factor in.

You can not credibly argue that. You are holding the iPad 90% of the time you are using it, and the design affects thing like weight, screen size, comfort, the touch screen interface, etc. NONE of those things apply to a home game console that sits under your TV.

Something I haven't seen brought up is the issue of cooling and noise. Without seeing the box we really have no clue how it'll behave and speculations can run wild. I don't think it's worth all the fuzz it's getting though.

It would be interesting to know roughly what to expect and with a box design we could get some nice Ars theorizing about these things.

The case is kinda irrelevant. The fact that they demonstrate they have an actual, working PS4 is not. Until they do, it doesn't matter what specifications they throw in the air: all they are showing off is numbers and pre-recorded video, which could well have been done on something entirely different from the PS4 hardware itself.

Or in other words, it's vaporware until they produce some actual physical object to show it isn't. That reaction might seem a bit extreme, but consider all the times gamers have been burned by promises from developers, up to and including highly details specifications, only for the reality to turn out completely different from the promises.

Sure, a physical box wouldn't have shown all that much, but it would have demonstrated that Sony had some substantial confidence in the device itself, and not simply their presentation of what the device was. A shiny presentations with lots of numbers and videos is pretty easy to do. An actual physical device (ideally running) is the hard part, and Sony hasn't shown us that they've done that part yet at all.

How many different "boxes" did Sony use for the Playstation 2? The Playstation 3? The exterior case is repeatedly redesigned (and shrunk) during the life of a console. Its capabilities remain basically unchanged despite repeated redesigns of the case. So by ignoring the box and focusing on the PS4's abilities, Sony focused on what will define the PS4 and not what will be changed every couple years.

I think I figured it out. The people who care about how the box looks are designers. Everybody else who doesn't care is a developer.

I'm a developer. I care about aesthetics. However, I can also see how their not displaying something now could be construed as a good thing for potential PlayStation 4 customers... Sony isn't thoughtlessly rushing the process. So in spite of the comments from various Sony reps suggesting that the aesthetics of the case don't matter, I would argue that someone important within Sony does care about aesthetics.

The case is kinda irrelevant. The fact that they demonstrate they have an actual, working PS4 is not. Until they do, it doesn't matter what specifications they throw in the air: all they are showing off is numbers and pre-recorded video, which could well have been done on something entirely different from the PS4 hardware itself.

Or in other words, it's vaporware until they produce some actual physical object to show it isn't. That reaction might seem a bit extreme, but consider all the times gamers have been burned by promises from developers, up to and including highly details specifications, only for the reality to turn out completely different from the promises.

Sure, a physical box wouldn't have shown all that much, but it would have demonstrated that Sony had some substantial confidence in the device itself, and not simply their presentation of what the device was. A shiny presentations with lots of numbers and videos is pretty easy to do. An actual physical device (ideally running) is the hard part, and Sony hasn't shown us that they've done that part yet at all.

That's silly, though. What's to stop them from using fake hardware inside a branded PS4 to achieve the same thing you're suggesting? Sony set the tone for their hardware this generation, which was important to achieve. And folks have had dev units for quite a while. They're not going to change the internals at this point.

The physical form of the PS3 (the first huge one) is one of the factors that kept me from buying it. Granted the 360 was not a lot smaller but it was more attractive to me (a bit anyway).

It seems disappointing to me that the Sony talking heads have so weak a grasp on the importance of the aesthetics of the console as a factor in a consumer electronics purchase. You would think a long time maker of such devices, like Sony, would understand that the 'sexiness' of a physical device is very important in selling it and especially in creating a draw and buzz before it goes on sale.

For a large number of people, the physical design of the thing is important because it will need to fit into an existing home theater setup or an enclosure.

For another large group, it will be important because it will effectively be 'on display' so they can show it off (if it looks good).

For some, it will need to do both of those things.

For a very small group, the physical design really doesn't matter at all.

Are the games, the experience and other features of the system important? No question. Those are more important than the physical presence of the device.

However, please do not discount the importance of physical appearance, design and form factor of a thing like this. After all, there is a reason the iPad doesn't look like this:

I think I figured it out. The people who care about how the box looks are designers. Everybody else who doesn't care is a developer.

I'm a developer. I care about aesthetics. However, I can also see how their not displaying something now could be construed as a good thing for potential PlayStation 4 customers... Sony isn't thoughtlessly rushing the process. So in spite of the comments from various Sony reps suggesting that the aesthetics of the case don't matter, I would argue that someone important within Sony does care about aesthetics.

Haha, I was attempting to be stereotypical. I'm also a developer and care about aesthetics but I think all of this snark over Sony not showing how the physical PS4 box is going to look YET is just over-the-top ridiculousness. To everybody making a big deal about this, when's the last time Sony put out a physical product that looked like crap? Wouldn't you rather have them taking the time to perfect the design instead of putting an unfinished product in front of you when it still won't be released for another 9 months?